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Talk:Mutant Massacre
"The way the story occurred was not the original plot. The orginal plot was Marvel's comparison to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. It involved the Fury destroying the Morlocks, not the Marauders, and the Hellfire Club allying itself with the X-Men. James Jaspers was supposed to join forces with Senator Kelly to trigger the Days of Futire Past events (with Captain Britain and Rachel Summers still as members of Excalibur). The reason this plot failed to occur is because of Alan Moore's legal problems with Marvel, hence the final version of the Mutant Massacre with Sinister and the Marauders. " Parts of this are nonsensical. Not only was Excalibur not even being published yet, it wasn't even a glimmer in anyone's eyes. Rachel Summers had just left Earth-616 with Spiral and disappeared into the mojoverse. Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler would only receive the injuries that would result in them not being with the X-Men for Fall of the Mutants during the Mutant Massacre, and it was their lack of involvement in FotM that resulted in them founding Excalibur (because they thought the X-Men were dead). Excalibur wouldn't start publication until after Fall of the Mutants - and the first thing published was the The Sword is Drawn special that would only later be followed by a regular series. This makes the statement "Captain Britain and Rachel Summers still as members of Excalibur" both blatantly false (they can't continue to be members of something they aren't members of. Which they aren't because it didnt exist yet) and extremely confused. Its also unclear why Moore's legal problems with Marvel would have any bearing on that storyline. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore), Moore has had two different legal incidents involving Marvel. In the first case (and the only one possibly old enough to effect the MM storyline), Moore had a dispute about reprints of Marvel UK's Doctor Who Weekly stories, nothing to do with any of the above referenced characters at all! The later dispute didn't occur until after publication of Moore's Captain Britain stories in graphic novel form in 2002! Frankly, I have failed to find any evidence supporting this statement on what the 'real' MM storyline was supposed to be, and have plenty of reason to doubt its veracity. If its author would care to document this rumor, it would be greatly appreciated. The only hits I can get online seem to be where this was copied from (for example: http://www.answers.com/topic/mutant-massacre, including typo "Days of Futire Past" and all), and all of these pages original source - http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/issues/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=690 - which has no citations, no quotations, nothing to suggest this is anything but somebody's pipe dream. Its also stuck in a weird place (comments on UXM200?) and written by someone who's not associated with Marvel (Nick Giard) as far as I can determine. I think this should be considered totally unsubstantiated. Note, no evidence for this version can be found on www.marvel.com. I am removing it from the main page (although it is archived in quotes here above) for these reasons. --Squirrelloid 07:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC) :Long time later but from what I've seen, Moore was exercising rights that exist under UK copyright law that differ from the US law. Without knowledge of the contracts themselves it's hard to say, but there are some good hints. For starters we don't have the concept of "work made for hire" and the writers/artists on early 1980s Marvel UK stories are the legal creators in a way their US equivalents aren't. Secondly we have the concept of "moral rights", derived from continental droit d'auteur, which differs from the economic rights. A copyright can be sold or even assigned at creation (if you create in the course of employment the copyright is default held by the employer unless the contract says otherwise) but moral rights are integral to the author and they have to agree to waive them. :The net result is that Moore had rights over his creations that a standard Marvel US creator doesn't and he was exercising them in reaction to Marvel US reprinting some of his Doctor Who work without paying royalties. Companies and lawyers are cautious beasts and so when you're in a dispute with a creator relating to work done under a different IP regime, it's best to avoid going there or back down on other uses rather than test loopholes to destruction. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:29, August 31, 2018 (UTC)